Little went well for Josh Allen in a frustrating game Thursday night against the Texans.
Yet he nearly managed to driving the Bills to a victory before an late pick in the final minute sealed their fate in a 23-19 loss.
Allen took consecutive sacks on the Bills’ last drive, leading to a long fourth down, but Buffalo (7-4) gained 44 yards on a short pass from Josh Allen to a receiver, who tossed a lateral to another teammate.
Following a false-start penalty created a fourth-and-6 for the Bills, a Texans defender intercepted Allen’s throw at the 9-yard line with under half a minute remaining.
“We had a chance to win it there at the end,” Josh Allen said. “We did a good job of staying in it and our defense bailed us out a couple of times. We’ve got figure it out, and unfortunately we failed.”
Proved difficult for Allen to establish rhythm on a night he was sacked a career-high eight times and hit four other times. The QB threw for 253 passing yards with a pair of picks and zero scores after producing six TDs in a victory over Tampa Bay last week.
Whenever they pressure our quarterback 12 times, that's unacceptable,” Buffalo's head coach Sean McDermott commented. “I don’t like that statistic at all. It’s just not a healthy way to compete and it’s not a good way to keep our field general healthy for the remaining games. We need to improve our performance.”
Allen was sluggish to rise after a tackle in the opening two quarters. He said he was OK and that his shoulder “lost some feeling” after he fell on it in an awkward manner. He was questioned about being contacted so many times on Thursday.
It's unpleasant,” he said. “I encountered a couple personally. I need to be more effective at throwing the ball away. On multiple occasions, I was going backwards.”
The Bills' QB lost 70 yards on the eight sacks. Anderson had 2.5 tackles for loss to lead the Houston defense. Another sack came when he almost sacked the QB near the scrimmage line, but he escaped and the defender got up and chased him downfield to drop him for an 18-yard loss to result in a punt in the third quarter.
The Bills played for a second consecutive matchup without wideout Coleman after he was once more a non-participant after he was late to a squad gathering before their previous contest. He was previously benched for the first series of a loss to the Patriots in Week 5 after additionally being delayed for a meeting.
No change. We’re just approaching it day by day,” the coach noted. “I thought he had a better week, but we are taking it one day at a time. It was not that it wasn’t thought about, but we went with the players that provide the optimal opportunity.”
Shakir topped the Buffalo with eight catches for 110 yards and James Cook had 116 yards and a touchdown.
The quarterback was frustrated that the Bills couldn’t make plays in crucial moments.
“Ultimately, we’ve got perform, and we didn’t succeed of that tonight,” he concluded. “No matter the situation and any circumstance, we’ve got to find a way, and we didn’t.”
